Grief is not a finite resource. It is used in abundance as a base for art as it is an emotion that is universally felt and resonates with the populous. It affects even the hardest of souls. The grief that is usually picked apart by art is often reserved for …
An ode to family, loss, and the beauty of stories, director and writer Patrick Dickinson’s Cottontail is a quiet meditation on what it means to be part of the world after someone you love has died. Dickinson’s narrative feature debut, the film follows Kenzaburo, played by Lily Franky, a sixty-something …
In 2022, CNN and HBO came together to tell us the story about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Navalny. His story, complete with poison, jail, and more, shocked the world and informed us about what was happening in Russia. But Navalny was just a story about one man, and …
Comedy is one of the great cultural forces. It is, in many ways, the great equalizer. In the hands of a talented performer, comedy speaks truth to power, whether that means mocking our leaders or finding commonality in the human experience. It’s the latter of these that filmmaker Neil Berkeley’s …
There is a reason you’ve probably never heard the name Linda Perry. The singer/songwriter has spent her life hiding from the spotlight, hiding from shame and her perfectionism, but mostly hiding from herself. She is best known for being behind the vocals of 4 Non Blondes and their 1992 mega-hit …
The coming-of-age genre has always explored teenage sexuality. More often than not, it is a genre filled with thoughtful ideas, discussing topics about teenage sexuality that are held taboo in society. Nicholas Colia’s feature debut, Griffin in Summer, an awkward and staid comedy, covers the topic of inappropriate sexual crushes …
When you’re a superhero, it seems like the world is always in danger. Be it villains attempting to take over the world, a comet headed straight to Earth promising global catastrophe, or an Alien race swoops in to establish global dominance. Sounds exhausting if I’m being honest, but I guess …
If there is a more reliable setup for a thriller these days than “young woman trapped in a place with a man,” I don’t know what it is. It’s incredibly versatile, whether you start out with the man being sweet and progressing to darker places, or have him be malevolent …
Horror is one of the most difficult genres to tap into. It’s really challenging to keep viewers at the edge of their seats with genuinely scary elements. However, every once in a while, we get to see a movie that truly captures the essence of the genre and takes us …
Meeting with Pol Pot is very loosely based on a memoir by an American journalist named Elizabeth Becker, who was at its first screening at the Cannes Film Festival. It must have been a very strange feeling to see a fictionalized version of some of the most important events in …
Roberto Minervini shared the best director prize in the Un Certain Regard strand of this year’s Cannes Film Festival for this mumblecore-style film about soldiers in the Wild West during the American Civil War. It’s the flipside to Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga (reviewed separately), which has broadly the …
There was one movie at this year’s Cannes Film Festival which was a passion project for the director that got all the attention: Megalopolis. But there was another movie, a passion project for the director, that also played Cannes, albeit not in competition: Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. This …
2022’s Venice Film Festival opened with the Noah Baumbach directed White Noise, a quirky and chaotic genre-mash up. It is a visually enrapturing film about a family surviving a toxic event while grappling with the feeling of impending doom and the mundane cataclysm of their lives. Adapted from Don DeLillo’s …
Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would still be talking about Bad Boys after all these years, and yet here we are. It’s mindboggling that the franchise is legally old enough to drink, with the first film coming out back in 1003, and that it’s still bringing …
Some TV shows and films are part of our formative process as children. Those programs that mothers would put the TV on for their kids to watch while they have to do something else, but those media pieces worked almost as nannies for them. The most prominent example of this …
Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo is kind of the ur-text for the modern adventure story. Published in 1844, it has it all: treachery, sword-fighting, injustice, long cons, false identities requiring elaborate disguises, secret children, hidden treasure, beautiful ladies, villains becoming heroes, heroes becoming villains, and revenge served …
I firmly believe that horror based on reality is always scarier than any supernatural horror film. Sure, don’t get me wrong, revengeful spirits and terrifying monsters make for some good thrills and chills, but at the end of the day, I can easily write them off as fiction. Instead, watching …
Any description of The Shameless could make it sound like the most exploitative trash, so it’s stunning to realize that despite the grim setting, the exceptionally troubled characters, and the hopelessness of their situation, that it isn’t. This is a testament to the skill of writer-director (and Bulgarian-American) Konstantin Bojanov, …
Miguel Gomes won the Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Grand Tour, which he co-wrote with Telmo Churro, Maureen Fazendeiro, and Mariana Ricardo, because it is an impossible film. It’s an epic pan-Asian journey best described as a mash-up of Wisconsin Death Trip and Apocalypse Now, …
In Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s latest film, the beloved director teams up with his star Glen Powell to write a script loosely based on a stranger-than-fiction news feature by legendary Texas Monthly reporter Skip Hollandsworth. It should be stressed that the real story, while remarkably gripping, does not go quite …